Title: White Satin For Mourning
Author: Lady Altair
Disclaimer: Never mine, of course.
Author's Note: Next time I will write something happy. Fluffy, maybe even.
When Fabian Prewett first brought Dorcas Meadowes to the Burrow, to the home he shared with Gideon and his sister's fledgling family, he was terrified she would not like it, just as he was continually terrified she would not like him. Dorcas was everything Fabian never imagined he'd wanted: nearly tall enough to look him in the eye and stunningly beautiful in a sharp, corporate way that looked especially well with the pinstripe robes she wore in her important, responsible, well-paid grown-up job in the Department of Magical Law. As far as Fabian saw it, he was still a kid who liked Quidditch and getting dirty and skiving off work whenever possible. Dorcas was a woman, a very clever, ambitious, beautiful witch who should've been off dating or living-with-but-not-marrying some high-level Ministry sort instead of falling in love with a 27-year-old kid who couldn't match his socks (thank God for Molly) and had to place locator charms on nearly all of his possessions to keep them, well, in his possession.
He proposed to her that weekend at the Burrow, with a ring he'd already misplaced twice. Dorcas joked that he'd asked her to marry him just so she'd have to take the ring and he wouldn't risk losing it again. She'd said yes, and Fabian woke up both amazed and elated by this fact every morning until the day he died.
It was the day after Dorcas bought her wedding dress. He'd stopped by the shop to try and peek at it, but Molly'd caught him at it and shooed him away. Dorcas had come out a few minutes later, in business attire as usual, kissed him and told him very nicely to get lost, because for the groom to see the dress before the wedding day was bad luck. Fabian teased that he'd seen everything underneath it, what did a bit of lace and satin matter? Dorcas had swatted him, holding out on a kiss in punishment for her slighted honor. He pouted but let himself be tossed out by his older sister and Dorcas' mother.
He'd waved at them as he passed by the front window, and that was the last they saw of him before Benjy Fenwick arrived in the Burrow's front garden and solved the mystery of where he and Gideon had got to the night previous.
Dorcas was broken, after that. She moved into the Burrow, into Fabian's now-abandoned room after her flat was found ransacked a few days after the funeral. She'd had to leave her job soon after, as Voldemort's presence in the Ministry grew more powerful and it became unsafe for a known and respected Phoenix like Dorcas. Molly knew she'd sent her Muggle family away, and bewitched them besides, but Dorcas didn't talk about it. They Fideliused her into the Burrow and made it look as she'd fled the country. She helped Molly with the children, delighting in them more than anything else, but she was quiet and almost hollow for much of the next few weeks. Her once smartly-styled chignons disappeared with the pinstriped robes she had so rarely been seen without, leaving a sad, painfully young-looking girl with long blonde hair loose over the back of robes that were too big and too long. Molly offered (very tactfully) numerous times to buy some new robes for her, but Dorcas had always politely refused, each day donning another set of Fabian's.
Charlie came down the stairs one day in mid-June, his young face contorted with worry and a child's intuition that something-is-not-quite-right as he told his mum that "Aunt Dorie is playing dress up in her room." It wasn't until Molly opened the door and saw Dorcas sitting on the bed in her wedding dress, Fabian's gold pocket watch in her hands, that she realized that it was the date she and Fabian had set, the sunny Saturday in June they had intended to be married on.
Gently, as though she were speaking to her young twins as they were on the verge of sleep, Molly asked her, "Dorcas, love, what are you doing?"
Blankly, the girl stared at the watch she held in one hand, her other hand running over the ivory fabric of her dress. After a moment, she said calmly, slowly, simply, "I'm trying to remember."
Molly sat down beside her, afraid to even touch this china doll in her ivory satin, even though she was already broken somewhere Molly couldn't fix. "Remember what, Dorcas?"
Dorcas looked up at her, her blue eyes sad and tranquil and hopeless. "What being happy felt like," she said, in a voice that seemed almost innocent but in truth was so far from it that it was heart wrenching. "The last time I wore this," she continued on slowly, steadily, without inflection or emotion at all, "I was very happy. I was wondering if perhaps I'd left some of it in here." She tugged at the bodice. There was a long, empty silence, and Molly could not think of a single thing to say to this almost-sister Fabian had left her. "But I think," Dorcas concluded serenely, looking back at the watch, "that I left it with Fabian, and I'm not quite sure there's any way to get it back. He seems to have run off with it."
Carefully, gently, Molly said, "He always was terribly careless with his things," before running her hand over the battered watch Dorcas held, the watch he had carried about and dinged up and stepped on and lost and been found with that horrible night.
At these words, Dorcas began to cry, and Molly couldn't remember ever seeing such tears from her, not even as they put him in the ground, but now they were falling freely down her cheeks, spotting the ivory satin with wet stains that didn't even matter because Dorcas would never wear the dress again and Fabian would never see it.
After she calmed, Dorcas pressed the watch into Molly's hand. "Give this to one of your sons, Molly. Give them something to remind them of their brave uncle."
"They will not need this to remember him. He was a brave man and his name will be in history books when this war is won! And yours will be too!" Molly insisted fiercely, proudly, pressing the watch back. "And you aren't going anywhere, Dorcas, don't start giving away your things like you're going somewhere."
"I know I'm not going anywhere!" Dorcas exclaimed, obviously affronted, but livelier than Molly has seen her since Fabian died. "I have no intention of going out and offing myself by Death Eater because, oh I'm just in too much pain to live!" There was a bitter, self-mocking anger in her words, but it faded as she continued. "Fabian would kick my arse if I went that way, and what a terrible way to honor his sacrifice, to just give up when I still have it in me to fight!" Dorcas cast her eyes downwards once more. "Give it to one of them anyway. It is not rightfully mine, and I cannot bear to think that something he loved as much as this should be lost to a dying line. He will have no sons, so give it to one of yours." She pressed it back once more, pain evident on her face, and Molly hadn't the heart to refuse her again.
"Any son of mine will be honored to have it, Dorcas," Molly said kindly, and Dorcas looked relieved. She descended the stairs later that day, the wedding dress once again hung in her closet. She watched the children, and when Molly went to call them to dinner, she found Dorcas on all fours, playing dragons with Charlie and laughing as she hadn't done in months.
Perhaps Dorcas wasn't quite as broken as she seemed.
Molly would never find out. Dorcas Meadowes was killed two weeks after that, answering a distress call from Peter Pettigrew, leaving behind her Fideliused safety, clad in one of Fabian's robes, her wand in hand. It was later reported that she had died valiantly, saving Peter, striking down three or more Death Eaters before Voldemort himself killed her.
They buried her next to Fabian, on a grey, rainy day in June, and only the Order was there to mourn. Molly could not mourn Dorcas all that fervently because she was sure that her should-have-been sister was bright and happy again, where grief could never touch her; she thought of the girl that Fabian brought home that first night, how she glowed when he smiled at her and did her very best not to cry when he brought out a banged-up velvet box and proposed. Wherever they were, they were together, and Dorcas would have a more beautiful dress to wear for her love than the sad, tearstained garment upstairs in the closet at the Burrow.
Molly put the watch away. She would give it to the very bravest of her sons, to honor her courageous younger brother and the equally valiant woman who should have been his wife. She packed away the ruined dress, stained irreparably with Dorcas' tears, in one of the many nooks and crannies the Burrow offered for storage, because she could not bear to bin it.
Not quite twenty years later, Molly gives the watch to Harry, who is the bravest son she has to offer to Fabian and Dorcas. Molly is sure they would be...that they are proud of this boy, this son of her heart.